currently $3.45/gallon for 87 octane and $3.65/gallon for 91 octane in Hilo, Hawaii.

Yah, sitting at £1.129 here in England at the moment. Considering a gallon is around 4.5L over here you are looking at a £5.10 gallon, or $7.80 approx. It's expensive, but like has been said we have services that have to be funded somehow. If only they actually did it properly.

Car tax, fuel tax, VAT (which is paid on top of the fuel tax, so when fuel goes up, so does the amount of tax you pay), national insurance, income tax, council tax, import duty, not to mention a lot of stealth tax like the £15 surcharge they added onto criminal fines recently.

A lot of the tax involved in bringing stuff in from the US to here is always related to how pissed off the governments of the two countries are about each other. My father buys American cars and imports them into the country, he bought a 69' Buick Riviera and about 3 days before he imported it there was an argument over something stupid like bananas and a trade embargo was put in place that took all special priviledges away. Stuff like cars made before 1972 not being elligible for import tax, and only being subject to 5% VAT. As it was he paid 17.5% VAT and 10% import duty. To add insult to injury, the VAT is added at the end of the calculation, so to the total cost of the car including car purchase price, shipping fees, finders fees, even the import duty is subject to VAT. It's a bit of a pisstake.

Yes sir.
 

Yes sir they tax the crap out of yal over there. By the time you figure everything out on a yearly basis Brits end up paying more than 50% of everything they make to the Royal Government. AND yes that is where we are headed if Obama has his way.

They may not want to call it socialized society, but that is exactly what it will turn out to be. We are already paying out about 25% to 30% in taxes now, so if they pass the new medical bill that will add another 20% to 25% to what we are already paying out. So think about that America??? That will mean if you make $16 and hour on the job that $8 of every hour goes directly into the Gov's systems and programs. So even though your pay looks good on paper, what you are actually working for is half of your hourly wages. So if you take good care of yourself and hardly use the medical system at all, which saves you tons of money now. Well that will all come to an end very soon, because you will be paying for everyone elses medical problems and/or frauds and scams.

Actually we are already much higher then that. By the time you figure Income tax, sales tax, transportation tax, import tax, gas tax, cigarette tax, alcohol tax, ect. You can figure that in the end, around 70% of everything we make, goes to taxes in some shape or form.

Yes
 

Sorry for not being spot on, but that is why I stated MORE than 50%. I knew it was high so thank you for putting it straight.:lol: My point was that your tax situation really sucks compared to most from teh stand point of having to pay out so much money from your wages.

I'm sorry, my point was, that "we" ,as Americans , already pay a much higher tax then 50% . By the time Obama is done, it will probably be more like 90.

The US and other countries should add more Ethanol into the gas. Here in the US it should be easy since they magically became the number one producer of Ethanol. I hope the US can back that statement, because I know it's not true at all. A single sugar cane farm in Brasil will always produce better quality Ethanol than here in the US and we don't have to sacrifice a source of food to produce it. Our Ethanol is basically a product that comes after our sugar and Cachaca :lol: is made. The farms I know off produce their own energy and some of the crap I've been hearing here is just amazing. I remember when US went to Brasil to get some of our Ethanol and we agreed to it, but ask why the US has put a 100% import duty on the Ethanol. So let the US use the corn to claim it's the number one producer of Ethanol :lol: and it's funny that Brasil uses it the most for their auto industry, but US produces the most so where the it go. Does anyone have an answer for this?

Should I have put this in the Conspiracy thread? :whistle:

Good conspiracy.

Gotta disagree with that Luc. Ethanol is hygroscopic, which means it absorbs water. In vehicles designed for gasoline this can lead to multiple issues, not the least of which would be frozen gas lines. There are many people who swear up and down that their mileage has decreased a significant amount with using adulterated fuels.

They have been mucking with our gas for at least 20 years. It started with the oxygenated fuels in the late 80s. This was the death knell for many a 2 stroke engine as it caused them to run lean and blow holes in pistons. Ask any snowmobiler what they think about either of the above and you'll get a very angry look at the least!

Its not just Obama....
 

Ethanol is miscible with water, but anything above 50% EtOH its melting/freezing point is below the coldest temps you find. Anything below that would have to mixed w/ some other fuel like gas, which also will not freeze readily. Engines do have to be specially designed to run EtOH tho as a high % fuel, and looks like cause their own special problems too.

Ethanol does have a much lower energy density than octane, so it does take more volume to get the same amt of power. I know my mileage goes down in winter. Too bad the price really doesn't. :(

We do produce tons of corn, but most of that sugar just goes into food or cattle feed. I would guess there are tariffs to protect our corn industry from cheaper cane produced ethanol. Also, I think I saw Brasil was a little pissed back in 2008 that the US may come into the market and buyout the EtOH as our gas prices were skyrocketing, and we are such a large and wealthy market. It was feared we'd just buy up Brasil's supply, leaving the people there w/o the fuel they need (and can't switch to oil easily.) Prolly some protectionism on both sides.


As far as taxes and budgets are concerned, we do pay a lot, but its a joke to say its all Obama's fault. No one from either R or D really wants to cut spending, despite all the noise they make about it. Congress wouldn't even agree to a budget commission to propose spending cuts.

Everyone wants to cut everyone else's spending, but not their own.
2/3rds of the Budget is Defense, Medicare, SS and debt payments. Obama didn't invent those spending programs. All the other stuff people complain most about makes up the last 3rd (which a good deal is unemployment payments. Who dares to cut those now?)

So where do we cut all the spending then?
Chop down the military?
Stop paying out SS?
Stop paying medicare?

Deficit reduction is going nowhere w/o touching those

No one wants to vote to cut the military, or cut benefits to Grandma. No one wants to raise taxes to pay for it. Anyone who proposes anything gets beaten over the head by the other side. Both sides do it, and nothing ever gets done about it. Raising taxes and spending cuts will have to be done to restore some fiscal sanity to the US budget.
For the most part, Obama got to come in as the house of cards fell. He who smelt it, delt it, right? We'll see what happens. Prolly just more bickering and finger pointing as Rome burns. (haha or Greece as it were.)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ycategory2.png

How pure is the Ethanol you're talking about? Here in the US, they have trouble getting to the level of purity found in the Ethanol in Brasil. I know the IRL is bringing their fuel from Brasil. The tuning of an engine to accept Ethanol will determine the performance one requires. You can go either way if you want, but most want all the power they can get. If the US and other countries increase the amount of Ethanol to let say 25%, the price of gasoline can be cheaper. There are a lot of vehicle that is Flex Fuel and the number is increasing. A 75% gasoline/25% Ethanol mix would be nice. I think the current number is 90% gasoline/10% Ethanol (Or is it 85% gas./15% Eth.). All this numbers are confusing, but most Brasil is in a warmer climate zone so they don't have to worry about frozen gas lines :lol:.

Brasil has plenty of surplus. Every year, they decrease the price of Ethanol in Brasil due to the surplus. Plus, Brasil hardly imports any petrol, we have plenty of that too. All I'm saying is that the US was going to import more Ethanol from Brasil, but US changed their minds and posted a 100% duty on Ethanol from Brasil. How do I know this? My family was pissed when they produced a bit more thinking the US was going to buy our Ethanol, which didn't happen. Who knows, maybe more conspiracies to go around :rofl:.

I love :love: this forum :yes:. Also, don't drink Ethanol :drunk:. Many people got really sick when Brasil made the switch thinking it was plain simple Alcohol :rofl:.

Luc if I had to guess, the purity of our ethanol is probably about the same as the trash we call 'food' so not good...

Finn, good to know my gas lines won't be freezing, but have a look at this- www.fuel-testers.com/list_e10_engine_damage.html

As usual, the public has no say in the matter.

@ Luc: What I meant is that if the US switched a lot of the gasoline usage to EtOH, it would overwhelm world EtOH supplies. From the figures I saw, the US and Brasil produce ~4B gallons of EtOH a yr each. The US consumes ~400M gallons of gas a day. IE, we would burn thru the world supply in less than a month.

From the US perspective, we spend a lot of (tax) money, and have a huge corn lobby, building and protecting a(n inferior) corn-based EtOH supply.

From Brasil's view, they've spend decades building pure EtOH based transportation and economy. If left unchecked, the US could piss thru a lot of it very quickly, forcing prices up. As Red pointed out, EtOH burning engines have to be specially designed, so it would not be easy or cheap for Brasil to switch to a petroleum fuel supply to replace the lost EtOH.

I'm not suprized Brasilian EtOH is much cleaner than US corn based EtOH as the starting material is so much cleaner (ie pure sucrose sugar.) Corn would have a lot more complex sugars and starches, as well as plant oils, chaff and other crap that would have to be processed, refined and distilled out.

@Red, I saw some of that too. Where EtOH is a bad lubricant, and more readily washes away lubricating oils as well. I think it burns hotter as well, IDK. I know it changes octane ratings too. Lots of problems to deal with.


BTW, you can drink ethanol just fine. Everclear is ~95% EtOH, tho I wouldn't drink that. ;) Methanol's the bad sh!t, and will make you go blind if you drink it. One more reason Nitro fuel is so bad!

As many who knows about this stuff say, "The US should learn from Brasil." You will never see that info in Brasil and we've been running pure Ethanol for a while now. Some vehicles will also work from any type of mixture you put in it. Deep south in Brasil get pretty cold and it also snows over there and none of the cars suffers any problems. You should send those guys an e-mail asking them to explain how Brasil made it work so good :lol:.